at the same time, we also know that the cost of healthcare still continues to go up. put that all together and medicare needs to be rethought of in terms of where we're going to be get the financial footage for it. so i'd like to ask you to specifically either give one proposal that you would oppose or one proposal that you would approve that would put medicare on a strong financial ground going into the future without passing on an undue financial burden to seniors and retirees. >> well, bill, medicare is hugely important. it's an important part of the safety net and it is also a challenging problem. let's acknowledge it's challenging because of something good, we're living longer. thank goodness for that, so that creates a problem. we have to solve it, but we can. i think there's right solutions and wrong solutions. i think solutions in medicare that cut costs and save costs rather than shift costs on to seniors' shoulders, so to give you an example. when medicare part d was expanded to provide a prescription drug benefit, i've alluded to this a bit earlier, and tha